Struck with a wave of nostalgia, I came upon two '70s sci-fi films in La Boite Noire last week and decided to rent them. Westworld features an onscreen dystopia about a sort-of Marineland gone wrong. It seems that in the future, you can attend a robot-populated vision of the past: either the Wild West, medieval world or Roman world. The problem with this movie is that virtually nothing happens in the first hour. But then comes the good stuff: in the last 30 minutes, Yul Brynner fills the role of the robot cowboy with serious menace. He's just one of the robots who've gone off their circuitry, attacking and murdering the guests. Richard Benjamin, in a sequence which must have had some influence on James Cameron when he made The Terminator 11 years later, tries desperately to survive Brynner's rampage. This final third of the film makes it all worthwhile.

Futureworld was the sequel, which stars none other than Peter Fonda, in one of his only high-profile roles of that period. This time, the owners promise that the robots will never malfunction again, and that they're really, really sorry about all those guests who died the last time the resort was open. Amazingly, everyone believes them and books a room in the new resort. Futureworld is also a bit slow-moving, but the body-snatching conspiracy at its centre is delightfully nutty. :

--Matthew Hays